The Virginia Council on Economic Education 2015-2016 Featured Books: Tia Isa Wants a Car by Meg Medina, Helen’s Big World: Life of Helen Keller by Doreen Rappaport, and Uncle Jed’s Barbershop by Margaree King Mitchell with discussion questions and lesson plans. These books are used to teach about savings,savings goals, opportunity cost, productive resources, and human capital.

AI Snapshots for the Social Studies classroom includes total of 45 classroom warm-ups. The 5-minute warm-ups connect AI concepts and applications to social studies topics like civics, history, and economics.

Estimated time required: 5 minutes.

Technology required for this lesson: Laptop/Desktop.

Article provides excellent tips and strategies for building comprehension and critical thinking skills in Social Studies. It describes some of the challenges students have with reading and understanding their textbooks.

This video [5:06] provides research related to the Common Core approach to vocabulary, footage of classroom teachers engaging students in vocabulary instruction, and sample vocabulary assessments.

The Anansi tales are told by the Ashanti people of Ghana, West Africa, and have been passed down through the generations by oral tradition. Here you can watch "Anansi's Rescue from the River" performed.

In this lesson, students will learn about Afrofuturism through exploring the Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures collection at the National Museum of African American History and Culture. Students will complete an online scavenger hunt and engage in a discussion about the cultural significance, key ideas and themes, and impact of Afrofuturism. They will also compare and contrast Afrofuturism and Black Futures. As an extension, students might give input on any ideas regarding Kinfolk’s monuments of Sun Ra, P-Funk, and Octavia Butler.

Estimated time required: 1-2 class periods.

Technology required for this lesson: Augmented Reality, Internet Connectivity, Laptop/Desktop, Smartphone, Tablet, Tablet or Smartphone.

This choice board, created from Google Slides, includes 20 different eBooks about the American Revolution. These eBooks will help build background knowledge on Ohio's Learning Standards for 8th Grade Social Studies on the American Revolution. Share this choice board directly with students and allow them to choose the eBooks they would like to read to learn more about the topic.

This Wide Angle video segment illustrates Islamic and secular elements of life in Turkey, and introduces Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the first president of Turkey, and his reforms.

Awesome Library's searchable database is full of resources in all subject areas. It also provides information to parents, students, teachers, principal, family, and community.

This audio excerpt captures the beginning of Bayard Rustin's 1967 "Freedom Budget" speech, describing the social and economic impact of racism over time.

This audio excerpt from Bayard Rustin's 1967 "Freedom Budget" speech outlines a nine-year plan to end poverty in America.

In this lesson, students use details from a nonfiction article to create a visual representation and then, from that visual, provide evidence that demonstrates their understanding of the text. Includes samples of student work and lots of other resources.

Understanding area and perimeter can help children work on solutions to very important, real world problems.

Students practice skills of addition, subtraction, word problems and graphing and develop their own theories about why meat consumption is so different across the world.

In this multi-day activity, students make 3 different models of an orphanage floor plan using Google Drawing, Virtual Graph paper, and a construction of rectilinear shapes, to calculate the area of each room using units square.

This lesson plan incorporates many subjects! Students create a flow chart after studying the "Evolution," of computers. Also provides adaptations and references to use. (To access this lesson plan, you must register with Crayola.com. Registration is free and takes only a few moments to complete.)

Article describes the importance of bison to the Metis, bison hunting culture, foods made from bison, and what the loss of the herds meant to the Metis way of life.

Lesson 4 is a step-by-step guide for the classroom which focuses on exploring and acknowledging the presence of Black people in the future and in space-related fields. It starts with students reading and discussing an interview with Samuel R. Delany. Then, students view a Black Futures artwork and information about Black astronauts, reflecting on the implications and spaces where they would like to see Black people fully represented. The lesson concludes with a design challenge task to make the best spaceship, either out of origami or recyclable trash. There is a recommended work time of 20+ minutes for building the spaceships, and students can submit their work for publishing on Instagram or email. The lesson is part of the #Kinfolk and #BlackFutures campaigns.

Estimated time required: 1-2 class periods.

Technology required for this lesson: Augmented Reality, Internet Connectivity, Laptop/Desktop, Smartphone, Tablet, Tablet or Smartphone.

This lesson plan incorporates art into a social studies or language arts class. Students create their own pictures, using the work of Harlem Renaissance artists as inspiration. Also provides resources and adaptations to try with this activity. (To access this lesson plan, you must register with Crayola.com. Registration is free and takes only a few moments to complete.)

In this lesson, students will use the CocoCast app to learn civics and social studies. These lessons are inspired by the San Diego Museum of African American Art’s 3-D exhibit titled “The Buses Are Coming” from August 2022. The lessons in this series will leverage augmented reality (AR) and use CocoCast, an app created by Three Space Lab, to be used on an iPad to allow learners to examine an artifact that would be otherwise inaccessible. The choice to employ AR will allow learners to experience the complexity of the emotions surrounding the bombing of the Freedom Ride bus in Anniston, Georgia. The lesson supports the development of oracy and literacy skills as students learn to evaluate historical events. NOTE: This lesson is part one of a four lesson sequence.

Estimated time required: 1 class period.

Technology required for this lesson: Augmented Reality, Internet Connectivity, Laptop/Desktop, Tablet or Smartphone.